Community schools continue to demonstrate that they are ideal settings for integrating high quality early learning and child development. Cross-sector collaboration is at the core of the community school movement – an effort to re-imagine and transform schools not only as places, but also as a set of partnerships. This emphasis on partnerships enable community schools to provide more seamless alignment of early learning and education to ensure the health, cognitive and social emotional needs of young children and their families are met. As community schools implement practices that help improve the quality and continuity of 0-8 programs, grade-level competency campaigns (such as reading by grade 3), and place-based/cradle-to-career initiatives, they are developing key lessons that can help inform community school initiatives as well as local, state and national efforts to integrate early childhood programming with K-12 systems.

The Coalition for Community Schools recently released two reports on early childhood practices in community schools that provide in depth information in preparation for this webinar.